About Time.
(February 25, 2025)
About Time. (February 25, 2025)
If you are a father of a son, in occasions like birthdays, turns of the years, and anniversaries, you may reminisce how you were at your son’s age. You may also reminisce how your father was when you were at your son’s age, and the relationship between you and your father. A father of a son may repeat his life twice, from enfant-hood to father-hood. Unlike me, my son has grown up to be a good man. He is kind, cares for other people, good at establishing communications, and brave. I’m proud of him. He has difficulties of his own in the life. I wish wholeheartedly that he will overcome the difficulties, and live a full life.
Every adult of the world wishes the wellness of children. Adults will be gone, and children will inherit the world. So, the best the grownups can do is to prepare the current world to be a better place, or not to deteriorate at least.
So far, the world events in 2025 seem to suggest that men are reaching the new stage of evolution. In the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), we see our ancestors, who look more like apes, find the Monolith in the middle of desert. A curious one touches the Monolith. Then the enlightened man-ape finds how to use a club (animal bone) as a weapon. The man-ape savagely and triumphantly throws the weapon into the sky high above. The club turns into an orbital satellite circling around the earth in the year 2001.
I read somewhere in movie reviews that the satellite contains all the nuclear weapons abolished by the nations. By the year 2001, all the nations agreed to abolish WMDs. Thus, men achieved world peace on the earth, and got ready to venture toward outer space. Indeed, the level of technologies in the movie, produced in 1968, could have been possible in 2001 if men stopped wars and spent all the effort to improve non-aggressive technologies like ones for space programs. The Monolith is a device to monitor the level of human evolution, installed millions of years ago by the Overlords. You may follow the Arthur C. Clark’s view about human evolution through The Sentinel (1948) and Childhood’s End (1953).
In 2025, wars are going on, and space programs are far behind the level that could have been reachable. It looks like the leaders of the strong nations are causing havocs over the world. There must be fundamental and deep reasons which cause such global commotions. Maybe, current civilization is about to reach the boundaries of environmental-resource constraints. Given the current distribution of wealth and resources within and among world nations, and given the current speed of consuming environments and resources, it is getting more and more difficult to maintain the current standard of living. (Lower income groups are hit harder because there is little margin to adjust their standard of living.) The nations are losing tolerance and capacity for caring and helping others. Thus, the leaders of the strong nations represent the domestic anxieties, earn domestic supports, and act accordingly.
On the other hand, international cooperations and coordinated actions are the most crucial elements to deal with global issues. So far in the year 2025, we observe the institutions and systems for international cooperations and coordinations are crumbling down. These institutions and systems have been designed and constructed through the ups and downs of political-economic environments through and after the world wars. Are the best laid schemes of mice and men going awry?
We call the earth “our mother planet”. Maybe, the earth itself is a lifeform even if it does not fit into the narrow definition of lifeform. (You may remember Solaris (1961) by Stanislaw Lem. Scientists try to analyze and try to establish communication with the living planet Solaris. They fail because Solaris is an impossibility to humans.) The earth nurtured men. What men did to the mother planet in return?
The actions by the leaders of strong nations may or may not improve the domestic welfare of these nations. It’s hard to predict. Perhaps, one inevitable consequence in the long run is that men are accelerating the speed of global environmental deteriorations.
It’s even harder to predict the future that is further away. It is said that about 65 million years ago, a meteor about 10-kilometer diameter hit the earth. The impact caused drastic changes in fauna and flora of the planet. The wisest dinosaur at the time of impact couldn’t predict the future world taken over by mammals. In Jurassic Park (1990) by Michael Crichton, Dr. Malcolm, a nonlinear dynamics expert mathematician, criticized John Hammond’s venture to resurrect extinct animals as unethical and dangerous. But in The Lost World (1995), Dr. Malcolm’s view had changed. He stopped criticizing Jurassic Park. He states that the second chance for dinosaurs caused by men, aside from human ethics, is just one of ramifications which is dictated by the law of physics, like motions of stars, or motions of particles. Nuclear fissions and nuclear fusions on the earth, which could have been impossible without human hands, are no exceptions. Maybe, Dr. Malcolm is saying that men are helpless. Men believe the free will and free actions. Men believe they can determine their own future. However, men and all the other things are led by God’s invisible hand. The future is already written in his chronicle.
Maybe, what we are observing in 2025 so far is a big meteor to the modern civilization. Maybe, out of the chaos, a new and better world will emerge. The world leaders of the strong nations, despite their barbaric words and actions in 2025, will be praised for their insight, wisdom, and defiance in the long run, 3000 years from now, perhaps.
There are many possibilities, from the best to the worst. Let me tell you my prediction; In the near future, the earth becomes inhabitable. Lord tells modern day Noah and his family to construct a spaceship to Mars within eight years. At the end of eighth year, Noah and his family set off to Mars. Just after the departure, Lord causes all the WMD on the earth to explode, and wipes out all men. Noah and his family hang on the settlement on Mars. After 3000 years, the sons of Noah find the earth habitable again, and return to start over again.
What is your prediction, my friend? Please tell me.
References:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Clark, Arthur C., The Sentinel (1948).
Clark, Arthur C., Childhood’s End (1953).
Crichton, Michael, Jurassic Park (1990).
Crichton, Michael, The Lost world (1995).
Lem, Stanislaw, Solaris (1961).
